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TV fame is fleeting. Does anyone recall O-Town?

VIC DAMONE watched ''American Idol,'' and here is what he thought: Sigh.

Fifty-five years before Kelly Clarkson defeated Justin Guarini to win Fox's hit unreality show, Mr. Damone won another contest, ''Arthur Godfrey's Talent Scouts,'' on the radio. The victory earned Mr. Damone, an 18-year-old crooner, the respect of his neighbors in Brooklyn and eventually his first gig, at a club called La Martinique on Sixth Avenue and 57th Street. Milton Berle, who met him in the radio studio, got him the gig. He was paid $150 a week.

Notwithstanding the differences in scale, Mr. Damone, 74, who is retired, could relate to Ms. Clarkson. He didn't watch too much of her run because he got too nervous for the contestants, he said from his New Jersey home. ''I had a stroke two years ago, so I said, 'I'll just watch golf tapes.' ''

With the benefit of hindsight, Mr. Damone had one bit of advice for his fellow contest winner. ''If I had any way to talk to her,'' he said, ''I would say, 'Get a great lawyer.' ''

Long before ''American Idol,'' hormone-drenched talent contests served as launching pads for American musical careers. Frank Sinatra got his first break, in 1937, on ''Major Bowes' Amateur Hour,'' which included Beverly Sills as a regular. Tony Bennett, Rosemary Clooney, Lenny Bruce, Patsy Cline, Connie Francis, Gladys Knight, Britney Spears, Beyoncé Knowles, Usher and Justin Timberlake of 'N Sync all got their start on television or radio talent contests.

But the future for Ms. Clarkson, whose first single is due Sept. 17, is by no means certain, said Joe Levy, the music editor at Rolling Stone magazine. Ms. Clarkson won with polished ballads of the sort the Backstreet Boys and Christina Aguilera wore out two years ago. ''The teen audience that's been there for this prepackaged pop music has already moved on to acts like Avril Lavigne, Ashanti or Vanessa Carlton,'' Mr. Levy said. ''They're performers who write or co-write their own material and seem to be more involved with the making of their music.''

In England, where the show originated as ''Pop Idol,'' the winner, Will Young, set sales records in February with his first single. But two recent American star-making vehicles have had mixed results. The boy band O-Town, which appeared weekly for three seasons of ''Making the Band'' on ABC and MTV, sold more than 1.7 million albums, but Eden's Crush, winners of the WB network's ''Popstars,'' managed sales of just 377,366. Neither act seems bound to repeat the television-driven success of the Monkees.

Brian Chin, a talent consultant for Atlantic Records, said that he wouldn't have signed any ''American Idol'' performers, but that the excitement generated was just what the slumping music industry needed.

The show could produce ''a two-or-three-million-selling album right now, without the expense of getting the songs on the radio,'' Mr. Chin said.

It is an adage in the music business that you can't put a price tag on the kind of publicity generated by ''American Idol.'' But if you could, it would be high. A recent article in The Los Angeles Times reported that the Universal Music Group, the world's largest music company, paid independent promoters more than $50 million last year to pitch its music to radio stations, routinely spending $400,000 on one song. In the current industry slump, the article said, the label is cutting this budget in half. Universal declined to comment.

For garish synergies alone, ''American Idol'' dwarfs all previous contests. It wove Ford commercials into its programming. Its effluvia have effluvia.

Ms. Clarkson's album is due out on Nov. 26. The show is also spinning off a TV special, a compilation album, a DVD and video package of the whole series, and a live concert tour, which begins Oct. 8.

The record producer Jimmy Jam, whose real last name is Harris, watched the ''American Idol'' hoopla escalate, and he, too, sighed.

Mr. Harris and his partner, Terry Lewis, have written and produced hits for Janet Jackson, Whitney Houston, Mary J. Blige and others. He watched ''American Idol'' obsessively, visited the set twice, and kept regular phone contact with Randy Jackson, one of the judges. His sigh was not that of Mr. Damone. He was looking for talent.

''To me, the show really favored people who like to sing in karaoke bars,'' he said, adding that he thought Tamyra Gray, who finished fourth, was the best pure singer. Unfortunately for him, Ms. Gray signed a management contract with 19 Entertainment, one of the show's producers.

Yet as a devotee of soap operas, Mr. Harris was hooked by the melodrama. ''Tamyra picked a bad song one week and got voted off,'' he said. ''It's like a microcosm of someone's career. You pick the wrong song and you're done.''

John Waters did not watch ''American Idol,'' yet even so, he, too, uttered a sigh.

He sighed for the genre's lost local innocence.

Mr. Waters based his movie ''Hairspray,'' now a Broadway musical, on a real Baltimore television talent contest. He has a typically perverse affection for the genre.

''My favorite was a show called 'The Collegians,' where they had folding chairs and the host looked like William Burroughs before he died,'' Mr. Waters said. ''Even as a child I was appalled.''

Mr. Waters said he did not find ''American Idol'' appalling, but that he has not given up hope. True unoriginality cannot be held down for long.

''When they've beaten every bit of originality out of it,'' he said, ''there'll finally be one local station in America that's still doing it. That's when I'll tune in.''

He may not have long to wait. A new season of ''Making the Band II'' begins on MTV next month. And the next round of ''American Idol'' returns in January.